Spring brings out the beekeepers, flies, bluebirds, miscreants and turkeys

by John Karrigan

Three not-so-wild wild turkeys were caught searching for breakfast in early March along Mi-nnehaha Creek.

Winter started early and istaking a long time to end, as we all know. Yet signs of spring have arrived anyway. A single Fox Sparrow was in the yard on March 23 and my first, and so far only, fly in the yard was active on the 16th. Some years I have seen raccoons, rabbits and bats by now, but not this year. Robins have returned to the park and neighborhood. Numbers vary widely, I think based mostly on day-to-day weather changes.

Last Sunday (March 29) was a great Robin day in the park, with 20 or 25 of them, often on the ground, in a noisy, happy group, which would walk within 5 or 10 feet of quiet people (like me). The ice wasn’t quite out then. Usually there are a few days of minor melting, and one big day of “ice out.” This year it was spread out with no big day, but the usuals, Canada Geese, Mallards, Wood Ducks and Ring-billed Gulls, arrived within a few days of each other in the middle of the month, and waited, apparently patiently, for Spring. I am still waiting! And the Juncos are still waiting, in the yard and park, before they head farther north for the summer.
Song Sparrows are back in the shore-side brush on the northwest side of the lake, but, as usual, are very hard to locate. I heard a Mourning Dove in the park but have not seen any in the park or yard so far this “spring.” Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers are still in the neighborhood, but I have not seen any Nuthatches, Brown Creepers, or Cooper’s Hawks so far this year.

Some miscreant recently broke in half one of the young trees along the north side lake path, but most of the other things going on in the park are good, except the weather.

One of the good things was a recent program about beekeeping. About 10 people attended to learn more about bees and honey from a pleasant and well-versed Powd-erhorn resident, Elise Kyllo. I, and some of the others, had learned lately that, for some reason, keeping beehives in the city is illegal but some are working to change that. The City Council is scheduled to deal with this on April 15. I have always liked bees, the useful service they provide in the overall scheme of nature, and of course the tasty and healthy end product. When I was little, I enjoyed the backyard beekeeping of an elderly couple in my hometown, and later got to know an interesting family on the commercial side of beekeeping that used semitrailers to haul thousands, probably millions, of bees between Florida and South Dakota as growing seasons and weather dictated. I have actually given quite a bit of thought to raising bees in my dotage, and now I may have reached my dotage. After the strange illegality of this is straightened out, or maybe as Powderhorn anarchists if it is not, some sort of community beekeeping, similar to community gardens or community-supported agriculture, would be possible in the neighborhood.

Now back to birds. Another learning experience at the park building is coming up soon. The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board is conducting training sessions for volunteers to help with the Minnesota Breeding Bird Atlas survey. The sessions (a group of three) will be held soon at the park building on Wednesdays, April 8, 15 and 22, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. with a program fee of $25.

A reader reported wild turkeys on Portland Avenue just west of Powderhorn. I have never seen them in our neighborhood but in other years a good observer saw them near Portland Avenue, another saw turkeys near Cedar Lake, and I saw them in far northeast Minneapolis and northeast of the U of M about where the new Gopher football stadium is being built.

A bird I did see but not in the neighborhood is an Eastern Bluebird. On March 20, I went to National Camera Exchange in Golden Valley to see about getting my binoculars repaired. On the wire fence, not far from where I parked, was a bluebird. How “ironic,” as TV anchors would say! It was not ironic, but it was a real live Bluebird, not a plant to help them sell binoculars. There is a fair chance that Bluebirds will pass through Powderhorn in the next few weeks. Anyway, I looked at the bird with my well-worn binos and went inside to see about repairs. The company, Swift, which made nice lightweight and moderately priced binoculars, had been sold to someone else and promptly and not so surprisingly was run out of business. There is one guy on the East Coast who repairs them and I will explore that. They still work but I think they are headed toward a serious problem. I try to take very good care of them. Looking at birds doesn’t wear them out, but untold miles in cars, trucks, boats, planes and even trains has been hard on them. I looked at some new ones, slightly more powerful, as I am slightly (or a lot) older, but they were, of course, somewhat more expensive.

The Bluebird actually moved down the fence so it could be seen through their binocular testing window and it really looked good through those nice expense Nikon binoculars.

There was a nice, frontpage story in the “big” newspaper (the Strib) on March 9 about Audubon Minnesota’s “Lights Out” program. More and more owners and managers of tall buildings are turning out unneeded lights in and on the buildings during prime migration hours and season. This not only prevents countless bird deaths from building strikes, it saves lots of energy and it makes the employees happier when they don’t walk past dead birds on their way to work. A win-win-win situation.

The Big Finale
Just after the March issue of Southside Pride came out, I heard from the Trumpeter Swan Society (www.trumpeterswansociety.org), the only nonprofit organization focused on North American Swans, as the nice woman wrote. She wanted to hear the story I mentioned about the first Trumpeter Swans I saw. It was a singular swan, not swans, and it is quite a vivid memory, just as she wrote that her first sighting was.

I was piloting a work barge on Lake Minnetonka at the end of a long, hard but beautiful day, when the bird came directly over the barge from front to back at a very low altitude. It seemed to be only 10 or 15 feet off the water and it seemed to be as wide as the barge (about eight and a half feet, or 102 inches). At the time, I looked in my books, confirmed it was a Trumpeter Swan, and deduced that it probably wasn’t as wide as the barge, but close, with a wingspan of about 90 inches. This was in the 1970s when Hennepin County was just starting its now very successful Trumpeter Swan restoration program. It was nice to hear from the Trumpeter Swan Society and nice to think about first sightings of various birds, mammals, butterflies, etc. Lake Minnetonka is also the first place I saw a Red-necked Grebe and a mink. It was a real wild mink, too, not part of somebody’s coat.

I hope spring finally arrives and that my readers enjoy it.
Comments and observations are always welcome. Send them to me, in care of the Southside Pride. Thank you.